chicago

T.J. Miller and Kumail Nanjiani I met when I was in Chicago, learning how to do comedy.

Chicago's one of the rare places where architecture is more visible.

I started out as a high school teacher in inner-city Chicago and realized quite quickly that my students weren't that motivated.

Our whole family assembles in Chicago at Christmas and usually in Aspen in the summer.

Coming from Chicago, I like a white Christmas.

I've been in Chicago for every Christmas of my life.

And then when I went to Chicago, that's when I had these outer space experiences and went to the other planets.

I grew up with six brothers, and I'm from Chicago, so princesses and Barbie dolls were not around the house. It was more like sports and comic books, so getting to work for Marvel is like my version of being able to be a princess.

The Cool Kids are Chicago. Me being from Michigan is a part of that dynamic.

What are you thinking?_ he asked in a disarmingly gentle tone.__hat the city looks different depending on whom I__ seeing it with.__e nodded easily, as if this same thought had occurred to him. __ notice different things,_ I continued. __ike with you, I pay more attention to the details of the buildings _ the textures, the colors, the people standing in front of them. The reflections are different.___eflections?_ he asked quietly.__hey are._ I watched our bodies morph and distort in the window of an empty bank. __ou__e there,_ I said. __hat__ how they__e different.

There seems to be a different Chicago around every street corner, behind every bar, and within every apartment, two-flat, cottage, or bungalow. City of immigrants or city of heartless plutocrats, say what you will, Chicago almost defies interpretation. In many ways Chicago is like a snake that sheds its skin every thirty years or so and puts on a new coat to conform to a new reality.

Chicago does not go to the world, the world comes to Chicago! Who needs New York? Who has taller buildings than our tall buildings? Who's got a busier airport than our airport? You want Picasso? We got Picasso, big Picasso. Nobody can make heads or tails of it. It's a lion? No, a seahorse. Looks to me like a radiator with wings. Who gives a damn, people, a Picasso's a Picasso.

Writer's block? I've heard of this. This is when a writer cannot write, yes? Then that person isn't a writer anymore. I'm sorry, but the job is getting up in the fucking morning and writing for a living.

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.

Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city.

But that kiss did more than turn her into a puddle of lust. It terrified her. Not because of how soul-searingly good it was, but because kisses like that don__ just happen. Kisses like that implied history and connection and bone-deep knowledge, and it made her question everything that had existed between them before.

She should pull away, even though she had begged for it with her smart mouth. She should punish him for every crime he__ perpetrated. For being too good-looking, too sexy, too everything. But the kiss was like him__ust too damn good. Warm and brutal, providing answers to questions she never knew she had. He teased with his tongue along the seam of her mouth, seeking that last nudge of acceptance as if it was his God-given right.She parted her lips, and like a predator hinged on her threshold, he took.

An inappropriate attraction to your friend__ fiancé was grounds for disbarment from the Woman Club. Neither did it make a lick of sense. He was uncouth, uneducated, uncivilized. All of their conversations back then had been unholy bicker fests where they charged from the opposite ends of the spectrum, determined not to meet in the middle but to rip pieces out of each other on the drive by.